The development and production of Insensitive Munitions (IM) testing of explosives is very important and valuable to the armed forces. More specifically, explosive munitions must possess certain minimum safety requirements when under attack from thermal or other physical sources or threats.
Tactics such as redesigned or experimental munitions and less sensitive explosive fills are being continuously explored. In order to evaluate the effect of these changes to the munition, IM testing is used. IM testing generally includes taking a given munition and subjecting it to some stress, in order to simulate a hostile combat environment. For example, to simulate an impact from a fragment, a carefully shaped metal object is launched at the tested munition at 8,300 ft/second. IM testing is a critical part of the development of Insensitive Munitions.
IM Testing, while, quite necessary and important, it can be prohibitively expensive.
Extensive research has been conducted to implement methods according to which all munitions would be required to reach IM compliance. One method of achieving this goal is to replace the formulation within the explosive ordnance so that it is less sensitive to bullet or fragment impacts.
When a replacement formulation is desired, multiple candidates need to be evaluated. Normally, this is done using calculations and a relatively small scale testing. It would be desirable to have such testing correlate directly to real world threats. Although it would be desirable to have each new or experimental formulation tested, testing can be quite a time consuming, costly process, specifically if the round in question is rather large or expensive to produce.
What is therefore needed is a standardized test assembly and method of use, which is relatively simple and inexpensive to implement. Prior to the advent of the present invention, the need for such a standardized test assembly and procedure has heretofore remained unsatisfied.